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Happy holidays from A Center for the Arts [UPDATED]
Published 9:13am Thursday, December 27, 2012 Updated 11:16am Thursday, December 27, 2012We hope everyone is enjoying this great time of year with good friends, good family and good food. In case you haven’t already noticed, the Center is closed this week. We will be closed from Monday, Dec. 24 through Tuesday, Jan. 1. Our normal box office hours will resume on Wednesday, Jan. 2.
We hope you’ll stop by the theater then to purchase tickets for our upcoming shows, register your kids for the preschool music class or one of our children’s choirs, sign-up to audition for Fergus Falls Has Talent or for one of our other community theater opportunities.
I know that many of you came out for Santa Saturday on Dec. 15 and enjoyed watching the holiday films here at A Center for the Arts.
We have had many requests to do this again.
As much as we would love to provide movies at no charge to the community, the films we show at A Center for the Arts do have a cost and without sponsorship we would not be able to show movies for free.
I want to take this opportunity to give a huge thank you to the Chamber of Commerce for sponsoring the holiday films on Santa Saturday, which cost just over $600 to show.
Most films we show at the Center cost anywhere from $250 to $300 just for the rights. Because we are showing films to the public, we are legally bound to purchase the rights and royalties.
Even if we own the DVD ourselves, or can get it somewhere for $5, it would be illegal for us to show the film without purchasing the rights.
This is what the FBI disclaimer you see at the beginning of DVDs is telling you — it is illegal to copy or publicly distribute the film without paying for royalties.
This cost does not include any other expenses that the theater incurs from showing films, such as: heat and utilities for the facility, equipment use and maintenance, staff time, advertising costs, etc.
Did you know that a light bulb for the projector we use to show movies costs $450? That’s right, every time that bulb burns out and we need to replace it, a single bulb costs us $450.
Once again, we thank the Chamber of Commerce for covering the cost of the films for Santa Saturday. Also, we want to thank all of you who came that wet, windy and snowy day.
We took collections of food and money for the local food shelf during that event, and your generosity resulted in a final donation of 156 pounds of food and more than $100.
Thank you very much for your donations. We were thrilled with the turn-out and the sizeable donation we were able to drop-off at the food shelf.
Although we are closed this week, please keep in mind all the events we have coming up.
Our next Center Series performance is on Saturday, Jan. 19 and features two one-act plays by the Mixed Blood Theatre out of Minneapolis. There are still general seating tickets available for this show.
And of course, we’re looking forward to the juried community talent show on Saturday, Jan. 26. I hope you have signed up to audition or plan to come and support your peers in the show.
If you are looking for any more details about upcoming events, please visit our website at www.fergusarts.org. Have a safe holiday and we’ll see you next year.
Kristin Fondriest is the executive assistant at A Center for the Arts in Fergus Falls.
